The Curators’ Quaderno - Louise Bourgeois in Florence

the

curators’

quaderno

an exhibition in the making

June – October 2024

Museo Novecento

Museo degli Innocenti

LOUISE

BOURGEOIS

IN FLORENCE

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the

curators’

quaderno

Louise Bourgeois in Florence:

An exhibition in the making

Created in conjunction with the Louise Bourgeois in Florence project

Project promoted by Comune di Firenze

Project and exhibitions by Museo Novecento in collaboration with Museo

degli Innocenti and The Easton Foundation

Exhibitions organized by MUS.E

Project and exhibition curators Philip Larratt-Smith and Sergio Risaliti

with Arabella Natalini and Stefania Rispoli

colophon

‘Do Not Abandon Me’ at the Museo Novecento

‘Cell XVIII (Portrait) ’ at the Museo degli Innocenti

22 June - 20 October

Exhibition and publication co-sponsors

Calliope Arts and Museo FAMM/Christian Levett Collection

Publisher The Florentine Press

tcq series editor Linda Falcone

Book design Marco Badiani

Book layout Leo Cardini

With texts by Linda Falcone, Philip Larratt-Smith, Margie MacKinnon,

Arabella Natalini, Sergio Risaliti , Stefania Rispoli

Printer Cartografica Toscana

ISBN 978-88-97696-30-8

2024 Bgruppo Srl, Prato

First Edition: June 2024

Series: The Curators’ Quaderno

© Calliope Arts Foundation

All rights reserved

Printed in Florence, Italy

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Louise Bourgeois

in her studio

Brooklyn, New York, 1993

© Philipp Hugues Bonan

courtesy The Easton Foundation

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the

curators’

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Louise

Bourgeois

in Florence

introduction

2

Louise Bourgeois in Florence is an ambitious

project that pays tribute to one of the most

iconic artists of the last century within two

important museums in Florence, the Museo

Novecento and the Museo degli Innocenti.

Do Not Abandon Me, the title of the Novecento

exhibition and several works on view, reflects

Bourgeois’ preoccupation with motherhood

and expresses a powerful sentiment that

anyone who has a mother, has lost a mother

or, most poignantly, never knew their mother,

can relate to. The artist had what Marina

Warner calls a “lifelong, furious ambivalence

about motherhood”, while Bourgeois described

her condition as having “been inhabited by a

ferocious mother-love”.

Bourgeois’ ambivalent attitude towards

motherhood is evident in Cell XVIII (Portrait)

on view at the Museo degli Innocenti. The

maternal figure at the centre of the piece

is simultaneously put up on a pedestal and

imprisoned in a cage; she is at once protective

and vulnerable. Spider Couple in the courtyard of

the Museo Novecento recalls one of Bourgeois’

most famous works, the thirty-foot-tall Maman,

a giant spider harbouring a mesh basket of glass

eggs. Bourgeois’ spiders celebrate traditional

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feminine skills of weaving and mending –

skills with which her mother earned a living

restoring fragile tapestries. But spiders can

be predatory as well as nurturing. Loving and

lethal. The theme of motherhood continued

to inform Bourgeois’ work well into her

90s, decades after losing her mother and

raising three children of her own. Bourgeois’

power as an artist ensured that she was

still active when she belatedly achieved

the recognition that eluded so many other

female artists of her generation. Not that

she would have wanted to be thought of as

anything other than ‘an artist’ without the

gender qualification. And while her art is

as accomplished, as powerful, as original

and thought-provoking as that of her male

counterparts, it could only have been created

by a woman.

Calliope Arts Foundation, together with

co-donor Museo FAMM/Christian Levett

Collection, is delighted to be associated with

this exhibition in two Florentine institutions

that provide the perfect showcases for

Louise Bourgeois’ art.

Margie MacKinnon

Co-founder, Calliope Arts Foundation

“My art is a form of

restoration in terms of

my feelings to myself

and to others.”

Louise Bourgeois

Paris, 1911

New York, 2010

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the

curators’

quaderno

from the editor

4

Exhibitions

in the making

This first publication of The Curators’ Quaderno

series, spotlighting the voices of groundbreaking

women, in history and from today, features Louise

Bourgeois and gathers insight from curators in Italy

and the United States, as they bring the artist’s

late works to Florence in two exhibitions, ‘Do Not

Abandon Me’ at Museo Novecento and ‘Cell XVIII

(Portrait)’ at Museo degli Innocenti.

These curators’ notes – which form an engaging

conversation with the artist’s own words and

images – were drafted during the show’s ‘gestation

stage’, as the two hosting venues stood empty,

ready for Bourgeois’ sometimes raw artistic

musings on motherhood.

There was something ‘maternal’ about these

venues, as they awaited the artist’s gouaches and

installations. Amidst the notes and quotations

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recorded herein, a reoccurring question

surfaces: how do places once dedicated

to the healing or education for poor and

abandoned girls add to the conversation

about Bourgeois, through their own

art collections and architecture? Do

these monastery-thick walls so typical

of Florence offer quiet hospitality to

an artist who once fiercely declared,

“You need a mother. I understand, but

I refuse to be your mother, because

I need a mother myself”?

Linda Falcone

tcq series editor

What is

tcq?

The Curators’

Quaderno is a

collection of

notebook-style

publications,

conceived by Calliope

Arts, in collaboration

with The Florentine

Press, to raise

awareness of women’s

contributions to the

fields of art, science

and culture.

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the

curators’

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notes

“On the occasion of its 10th

anniversary, the Museo Novecento

pays tribute to the art of Louise

Bourgeois, one of the absolute

protagonists of 20th- and 21stcentury

art, with an exhibition that

brings to Florence for the very first

time nearly one hundred of the artist’s

works. This includes many works

on paper, such as gouaches and

drawings, created in the 2000s, as

well as sculptures of various sizes,

made in fabric, bronze, marble and

other materials. The exhibition ‘Do

Not Abandon Me’ was created in

close dialogue with the history of the

building that houses our museum,

the Ex Leopoldine Convent, a

complex established in the 13th

century and run for centuries by

all-female communities.”

In the

artist’s

words

“I always had the fear

of being separated

and abandoned.

The sewing is my

attempt to keep things

together and make

things whole.”

Louise Bourgeois

6

Sergio Risaliti

Exhibition co-curator

and the Museo Novecento’s

artistic director

Louise Bourgeois

Umbilical Cord, 2003

Fabric and stainless steel

44.7 x 30.4 x 30.4 cm

Private Collection, New York

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the

curators’

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notes

“Together with a vast selection of works on

paper, the Museo Novecento is hosting a

number of sculptures – some large-scale

– which present two recurring themes in

Bourgeois’ artistic production: the spider and

the cell. From her earliest works, Bourgeois

reflected on her childhood relationships, and

associated her mother, in particular, with the

image of the spider from the 1990s onwards.

For Bourgeois, the spider represents a symbol

of the maternal figure, and as such it is the

bearer of dual and conflicting meanings.

On the one hand, it can be interpreted as

the embodiment of extreme intelligence,

a protective figure, but it can also be seen

as a threatening and disturbing presence,

an expression of underlying hostility and

aggression that collects and encapsulates

traumatic experiences from deep within

the unconscious.

Two important works that demonstrate

these dualities are on display at the Museo

Novecento: Spider Couple, a mother-and-child

pair set in the building’s Renaissance cloister,

and Spider, a bronze-and-marble sculpture

presented to the public for the first time.”

8

Sergio Risaliti

Exhibition co-curator

and the Museo Novecento’s

artistic director

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Louise Bourgeois

Spider, 2000

Steel and marble

52.1 x 44.5 x 53.3 cm

Private Collection, New York

“The Spider is an ode to my mother. She

was my best friend. Like a spider, my

mother was a weaver. My family was in the

business of tapestry restoration, and my

mother was in charge of the workshop.

Like spiders, my mother was very clever.

Spiders are friendly presences that eat

mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes

spread diseases and are therefore

unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and

protective, just like my mother.”

Louise Bourgeois

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the

curators’

quaderno

notes

“When she began this series of gouaches in the late summer

of 2007, her first works tended towards the graphic, with clean

lines and more empty space. Gradually, she moved to a more

painterly method: she allowed the gouache to soak the paper

and spread out over it, which is what gives many of these

drawings their embryonic quality. The various shades of red [for

Bourgeois the colour of passion, blood and emotional intensity]

create the impression that one is viewing these processes of

gestation, parturition, and nurture, as if from within. By working

‘wet on wet’, Bourgeois chose to let chance and accident shape

the final image – a method of ‘letting go’ which reflects her

acceptance of fate and luck.

The womb is the perfect home where all needs are met, an ideal

of security and repose. In a sense, these images are the latest

and perhaps ultimate versions of Bourgeois’ lifelong use of the

symbol of the house [from the Femme Maison paintings and

drawings of the 1940s through the animal lairs and nests of the

1960s, to the cell-like environments of the 1990s]. As with the

earlier versions, which elegantly conveyed both trap and haven,

the figure of the womb-as-house is not without ambiguity. On

the one hand, the return to the womb articulates the wish to

merge completely with the lost mother and on the other, the

womb, in Freud’s formulation, is the ‘former home of all human

beings’ that bears the ‘seal of doom’ and is the ‘object of an

“uncanny” feeling’. Hence the double-sided, Janus-faced nature

of these images. Confronting her mortality, Bourgeois reverts

to the primary images of the passage into life which, like the

uncanny double of the mirror-image, announces the inevitability

and proximity of death.”

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Philip Larratt-Smith

Exhibition co-curator and curator

of The Easton Foundation

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Louise Bourgeois

Les Fleurs, 2009

Gouache on paper

suite of 12

59.7 x 45.7 cm, each

Private Collection, New York

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the

curators’

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cries from

the cloister

A work from Bourgeois’ renowned

Cell series seeks a temporary refuge

at Florence’s Museo Novecento

notes

12

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the

curators’

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historic silence

and rabbit

skins

notes

“Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles

à Vendre is one of the final works

from Bourgeois’ Cells series, which

were first presented to the public

in 1991 at the Carnegie Museum of

Art in Pittsburgh. The title refers

to the artist’s childhood memory

of the cries of rag pickers selling

goods on the street. Within the

Cell, Bourgeois inserts a number of

sculptural elements that recall her

personal and family history, such

as cloth sacks and rabbit skins:

components referring, respectively,

to the empty womb and, by

extension, to the female body and,

more literally, to the animals hunted

and raised by her family members.”

14

Sergio Risaliti

Exhibition co-curator

and the Museo Novecento’s

artistic director

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Louise Bourgeois

Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons

Ferrailles à Vendre, 2006

Steel, stainless steel, marble, wood,

fabric, and Plexiglas

251.5 x 304.8 x 403.9 cm

Collection The Easton

Foundation, New York

ph. Andrea Rossetti

“Each Cell deals with fear.

Fear is pain. ...Each Cell

deals with the pleasure

of the voyeur, the thrill of

looking and being looked at.”

Louise Bourgeois

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the

curators’

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ambivalence

and motherhood

notes

16

“The Florentine exhibition presents a

survey of Bourgeois’ late red gouaches

with a thematic focus on the motif of

the mother and child. Within the show,

works are arranged by themes and

subjects such as flowers, pregnant

women, birth, feeding and the mother

figure. The exhibition’s title refers to

Bourgeois’ powerful and lifelong fear

of abandonment, which relates to the

mother-child dyad that sets the pattern

for all future relationships. Motherhood

and all its discontents were central to

Bourgeois’ conception of herself. At the

same time, as old age made her frailer

and more dependent upon others, there

was an unconscious shift towards the

mother in her late work.”

Philip Larratt-Smith

Exhibition co-curator

and curator of The Easton Foundation

Louise Bourgeois

Pregnant Woman, 2008

Gouache and coloured

pencil on paper

59.7 x 45.7 cm

Collection The Easton

Foundation, New York

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the

curators’

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Louise Bourgeois

The Feeding, 2007

Gouache on paper, 45.7 x 59.7 cm

Collection The Easton Foundation, New York

18

Louise Bourgeois

The Good Breast, 2007

Gouache on paper, 59.7 x 45.7 cm

Collection The Easton Foundation, New York

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the

curators’

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understanding

and tension

notes

“Created during the last five years of

Bourgeois’ life, the gouaches explore the

cycles of life through an iconography of

sexuality, procreation, birth, motherhood,

feeding, dependency, the couple, the family

unit, and flowers.

Bourgeois’ collaboration with British artist

Tracey Emin (Margate, 1963) is of particular

interest. A series of sixteen digital prints

on fabric form the display entitled Do Not

Abandon Me (2009–10), created as a result of

the two artists’ meeting. A project of great

generosity and empathy between Bourgeois

and Emin, it succeeds in communicating their

own unique artistic languages, whilst creating

strong visual compositions of understanding

and tension, raising them to a universal level.”

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Philip Larratt-Smith

Exhibition co-curator

and curator of The Easton Foundation

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Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin

I Wanted to Love You More

from Do Not Abandon Me

(2009-2010), suite of 16

Digital prints on fabric

61 x 76.2 cm, each

Collection The Easton

Foundation, New York

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the

curators’

quaderno

notes

“Louise Bourgeois’ art evokes deep and

often conflicting feelings, ranging from

contemplation to distress, almost anguish.

Emotions such as loneliness, jealousy,

anger and fear are common threads that

run through many of her works, from

drawings to sculptures to written texts,

and it is impossible to remain indifferent

to their expressive power, which forces us

to reframe our social references, as well

as the desires and ghosts within our own

personal lives.”

22

Stefania Rispoli

Exhibition co-curator

and curator at Museo Novecento

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Louise Bourgeois

Spider Couple, 2003

Bronze, silver nitrate patina

228.6 x 360.7 x 365.8 cm

Private Collection, New York

“With the spider, I try to put

across the power and the

personality of a modest animal.

Modest as it is, it is very definite

and it is indestructible. It is not

about the animal itself, but my

relation to it. It establishes the

fact that the spider is my mother,

believe it or not.”

Louise Bourgeois

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the

curators’

quaderno

notes

“The Innocenti was founded in 1419 as

a foundling hospital, with the specific

purpose of welcoming children deprived

of family care, in an environment marked

by its high artistic and architectural

value. The Institute has never interrupted

its original mission, and it is known for

pioneering innovations in the care of

young children, from their earliest stages.

Completely renovated in 2016, the Museum

integrally restores the institution to its

history through architecture, art, archival

documents and its precious collection of

the children’s ‘recognition tokens’ kept in

the Innocenti’s Historical Archive. All of

these elements create an extraordinary

ensemble that is unique on today’s

museum scene, in Florence and the world.

The complex, designed by Filippo

Brunelleschi, welcomes Cell XVIII (Portrait),

a work of strong visual impact, which

powerfully resonates with the Innocenti’s

history and the collection itself, especially

its ‘Madonna degli Innocenti’ paintings by

Domenico di Michelino (attributed) and

Jacopino del Conte.”

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Arabella Natalini

Exhibition co-curator, scientific director

at the Museo degli Innocenti

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Istituto degli Innocenti, Façade

ph. Guido Cozzi

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Museo degli Innocenti

Historical itinerary

Far left: Florentine painter

from Domenico di Michelino

Madonna degli Innocenti

Mid-16th century

Tempera on canvas

Istituto degli Innocenti

ph. Guido Cozzi

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the

curators’

quaderno

notes

“The title of Bourgeois’ series is a play

on the multiple meanings of the word

‘cell’, which can be translated into Italian

as ‘cellula’ or ‘cella’. Therefore, it just as

much refers to the basic unit of all living

organisms, as to the condition of isolation

and separation that characterises a prison

or a monastery.

These meanings have special resonance

at the Museo Novecento and Museo degli

Innocenti. Since their foundation and

over the centuries, they have had a social

function particularly related to women,

serving as places of welcome, shelter,

education and reintegration for women,

but also as schools and even prisons, in the

case of the former Leopoldine convent.

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Stefania Rispoli

Exhibition co-curator

and curator at Museo Novecento

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Louise Bourgeois

Cell XVIII (Portrait), 2000

Steel, glass, wood, and fabric

207 x 123.1 x 128.2 cm

Collection The Easton

Foundation, New York

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“The subject of Cell XVIII (Portrait) seems

to uniquely reinterpret the iconography

of the Madonna of Mercy, which recurs

in some of the most emblematic works

in the Museo degli Innocenti’s collection

and strongly represents the Institute’s

vocation of hospitality. This image calls

to mind the large female community

composed of the girls received and

raised here.

Yet, it also evokes the figures who,

by performing various tasks, have

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Museo degli Innocenti

Art itinerary

Central painting: Jacopino del Conte

Madonna degli Innocenti

1530-1535 c.

Tempera on canvas

Istituto degli Innocenti

ph. Guido Cozzi

contributed to ensuring that the condition

of women, and of mothers in particular,

has become part of our institutional

mission alongside promotional activity

supporting the rights of children and

adolescents, which identifies the Istituto

degli Innocenti today.”

Arabella Natalini

Exhibition co-curator,

scientific director

at the Museo degli Innocenti

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the

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Louise Bourgeois’ art and words are © The Easton Foundation / Licensed

by S.I.A.E., Italy and VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

For Bourgeois’ artworks, all photos by Christopher Burke unless

otherwise noted.

Front and back cover: Les Fleurs, 2010 (detail). Gouache and pencil on

paper, 59.7 x 45.7 cm. Collection The Easton Foundation, New York

P. 3 and back cover: The Guardian, 14 October 2007 (R. Cooke)

P. 6: Louise Bourgeois. Aller-Retour

(Nürnberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2005), 201

photo credits

P. 9: Statement, 2001; Courtesy Louise Bourgeois Archive, New York

P. 10: Previously published in Philip Larratt-Smith, ‘Mother Nature,’

Louise Bourgeois: Nature Study (Edinburgh: Inverleith House, 2008), 5

P. 11: Louise Bourgeois: Blue Days and Pink Days

(Milan: Fondazione Prada, 1997), 254

P. 15: Carnegie International 1991

(Pittsburgh, PA: The Carnegie Museum of Art, 1991), 60

The following photos capturing scenes from Florence’s exhibition venues

are used with permission by the photographers and museums featured.

Pp. 4-5: Façade of the Museum Novecento, courtesy of the museum,

ph. Serge Domingie

Pp. 12-13: Scenes from Museo Novecento, fresco detail,

ph. Valeria Raniolo; Cloister courtyard courtesy of the museum

Pp. 24-25; 26-27; 30-31: Courtesy Istituto degli Innocenti,

ph. Guido Cozzi

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A continued commitment

to Florence

Louise Bourgeois

in Florence, a

project organised

by Museo

Novecento with

Museo degli

Innocenti and

The Easton

Foundation, is

curated by Philip

Larratt-Smith

and Sergio Risaliti

with Arabella

Natalini and

Stefania Rispoli.

Calliope Arts Foundation strives to

further public knowledge of female

contributions to the visual arts, literature,

science, music and social history in

Florence, London and the world. Cofounded

in 2021 by Margie MacKinnon and

Wayne McArdle, it provides support for

restorations, exhibitions and education,

as well as curating and underwriting

broadcasts and publications such as

The Curators’ Quaderno and Restoration

Conversations magazine.

FAMM and the Christian Levett Collection

are the brainchild of Christian Levett, an

art collector recognised worldwide for

his philanthropic commitments to the

arts. FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins

Museum) is the first European museum

dedicated to women artists from the 19th

century to the present day. The Levett

Collection in Florence, open to private

groups of museum patrons and collectors,

specialises in women abstractionists.

One year after the completion of the

‘Artemisia UpClose’ project at Florence’s

Casa Buonarroti, these philanthropists

and their organisations come together

again, in support of the Louise Bourgeois

in Florence project.

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“My art is a form

of restoration in terms

of my feelings to myself

and to others.”

Louise Bourgeois

euro 2.00